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Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#151

Post by mackrevinack »

qppo wrote: post #39

I actually get a lot of value from cloud hosted solutions, I bounce between 2-3 machines daily and multiple OS installations several times a week, and would like for my notes taken on one machine to just be there when I write notes on another machine. Another thing I need to do often is type up design docs collaboratively, we use google docs for this currently but it sucks for our use cases. And finally, I read and w…

there's always the option of syncthing + a vps (or network drive or raspberry pi if you have one). i use it with a synology network drive myself and would find it hard going back a cloud storage due to the slow speeds you get when files have to go across the country and back again

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#152

Post by StonyRhetoric »

This is amazing - I have a homebrew version of this - markdown only, with some scripts to wire-up the links, relying on unique file names.

This is miles better that what I have, and I look forward to using it.

A feature request - mermaid JS support please! This would allow me to import my ~3k existing markdown files without modification.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#153

Post by rement »

I'm considering using this but I'm having the same issue many others are with Obsidian itself being closed source. To any obsidian employers or stakeholders have you thought of an open core model for Obsidian?

Open core would help any cautious users and give your community the ability to help maintain your product.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#154

Post by harritaylor »

alexmingoia wrote: post #116

For the people complaining it’s not open source: Why does that matter ? It’s not like your markdown disappears if they do. You would just have to write software or purchase another software with the same conventions.

Yeah, I’m totally confused by this. It’s not like the data is in a mega proprietary format, it’s all valid GitHub markdown apart from the back linking, which would probably be relatively easy to reimplement if the company went out of business. I see org-mode being promoted as a viable alternative but it’s personally been a significant pain in the arse getting org files to being valid markdown. The beauty of obsidian IMO is that the “backend” is just Plain text markdown files organised in folders.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#155

Post by harritaylor »

justtocomment wrote: post #22

Can't comment on the merits of the product itself. That in the first five minutes of this post being online, several users more or less claim that this has changed their lives in their first-ever comment on HN strikes me as a little odd however. (Yes I'm aware that this is also my first-ever comment on HN.)

It does seem suspicious but personally the only reason I jumped in was because I’m genuinely so happy with this software and I believe that it should be tried out by as many people as possible!

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#156

Post by tobias2014 »

Am I the only one that has never before stumbled upon AppImage or Snap? I had to "google" to see that it's basically just chmod +x.

I suppose when the appimage doesn't work out of the box the user is knowledgeable enough to figure out what to do with it anyway.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#157

Post by rhezab »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Interesting stuff!

I currently use Andy Matuschak's [1] system, using his note-link-janitor script [2] to generate backlinks and Typora to edit. The only thing Obsidian adds is the graph view for me, but it seems that Obsidian generates backlinks using file name, not title. I prefer linking by title. Perhaps this can be an option? The editor also seems to be lacking a little... for instance I can't seem to render math. Hopefully some of my feedback will be useful to you.

Overall really cool idea, but probably not going to use for now. Will keep tabs, and wish you the best of luck!

[1] https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes [2] https://github.com/andymatuschak/note-link-janitor

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#158

Post by christiansakai »

goodsignal wrote: post #131
christiansakai wrote: post #56

Nothing is forever. Especially if it is not free. Especially if it is not open source. If personal use is free forever but not open source, how am I supposed to believe that it will be free forever? Color me skeptical.

Healthy skepticism is great! But every post of yours is perfectly fitting the troll recipe. But just in case you're being genuine, here's my take. The software is already nice and very usable, even at this early beta stage. There's going to be a million users within a couple years. One thing I've noticed about the PKM community, is that there are a lot of really smart and ambitious people here. You know what that mea…

I don't know what is it about every of my post that fits troll personality. Maybe because my first language is not English?

As for the rest of your post, fair point.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#160

Post by christiansakai »

ericax wrote: post #126
christiansakai wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you guarantee that your guarantee is guaranteed? (not a troll question even though the wording seems to imply so)

Need to consult a lawyer on that, maybe it needs to be notarized somehow? There have been some attempts to do this (by other apps), we can look into their approach as well. And yeah no offense taken, don't worry about it :)

I see, I'm not familiar with that as well that's why I'm asking.
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